Recap of “Look at the Ant”
We open on a gloved hand picking a lock. It turns out to belong to Kale Ingram and the lock he picks leads him to one Will Travers’ home. WHO IS THIS GUY!? Things get more twisty later as we see Maggie in Will’s office snooping around as well. When he interrupts her, she says she was there to invite him to a dinner at Kale’s. Weird dinner parties commence! As Will attends Kale’s house for a little white bean salad, things are by turns awkward and confusing. First we meet Kale’s life partner who is NOT what I expected, then Kale does his intimidation move while asking if Will enjoys white bean salad. Then Will uses a slime mold as an analogy to a terrorist organization (You can’t ever kill the slime mold by killing individual parties to the mold, you have to attack the organism as a whole, etc.)

THEN Kale breaks it down, his partner leaves the table and Kale basically lays it out for Will. Bloom was in a car accident with a man named Edward Roy (the unnamed man in the laundromat, gym from the last few episodes, aka Clay Davis). Kale offers his assistance and tells Will to track down Roy and find out who he was working for. He also mentions Will should not work at home because he is under surveillance (CAUSE HE BROKE IN AND KNOWS!). Will starts to get a bit freaked out and spends the next act of the show checking his house for bugs, freaking out, and researching Edward Roy in a gamer lounge. His paranoia is PALPABLE. And with good reason as we see when he leaves he is being followed. He confronts the tail, snaps his picture, and takes off, holding him at bay with David’s gun. When Will returns to API, Kale and he discuss his findings on the rooftop: Roy is ex-CIA and runs a security group called Garson which was purchased by Atlas McDowell.

Love is in the air for Maggie as she gets bored with her life once her ex has Sophie, her daughter, for a night. She calls Will and asks him for a drink, but he’s knee deep in BUGGING out (get it!?) at that point and declines. So she goes with option number two: some dude from her class. Things get saucy thanks to some wine and Scrabble (most erotic board game). They end up sleeping together just in time for Will’s freak out to ratchet up to the point that he seeks her out. He visits, hears another man’s voice and looks 31 flavors of disappointed. He leaves and she boots no-name classmate out on his hide.  Maggie and Will share an awkward exchange at work the next day and things between them see stalled for the time being.

The API Crew (Miles, Tanya, Grant) are gathered at work today to prepare for the marriage of George Beck’s son. Miles decides to stay late in order to finish preparation and witness the ceremony firsthand while Grant and Tanya ship off to less boring pastures. Miles’ late night fun at API takes a turn when he realizes the wedding guests are speaking Urdu, a language which he does not. He rushes through API and finds a lone other soul, who luckily does speak the language in question. They spend the evening together, she translating his Urdu, he quietly falling for her. Which we see in the moment when George Beck is giving a speech about love and his son and Miles just glosses over as she translates the speech for (to) him. Also of note from their translation: a discussion of “The Foundation” seemed to be of importance/intrigue to Miles and his new friend.

Katherine continues her search for clues into her husband’s suicide. She takes the lead from the newspaper clipping found in at MRQ Alternatives and seeks out the suicidal professor’s wife. She finds Mrs. Alex Bradley and asks her whether she knew of any connection between their deceased spouses.  She did not. Unwilling to let sleeping dogs lie, Katherine returned home and re-read the news clipping. She noticed that Mr. Bradley was on the board of something called Atlas McDowell (coming up a lot tonight!), which by gum, her husband had a trinket from. She returned to discuss this with Alex who commenced rambling about how their husbands were cowards. She apologizes before showing Katherine some of Mr. Bradley’s things, including a four-leaf clover which sets Katherine off. She leaves immediately. Too quick, in fact, as we see Mrs. Bradley pull out the now familiar photo of boys ready to swim.

Discussion
Another deep episode to dig into. I’m not even sure what to focus on, but I think what I’d like to look at is the continuing examination of fractured relationships or even fragments of fractured relationships. I’ll just pick at some interesting notions we saw here and try to keep it short then head to the questions this episode raised for me.

Will-Maggie: This relationship was budding until Will shunned her in his paranoid state following dinner at Kale’s. Then she called the “sure thing” and made an apparent mistake with him. Will shows up and things get awkward in a HURRY. It looks like this once-potential romance has hit a snag. What I wonder about here is how this plays with Maggie’s job. I’m still not convinced her motives are purely personal after that sit-down she had with Kale.

Kale-Donald Bloom: Well this one is fishing a bit, but it certainly appeared that Bloom and Kale had an extracurricular rapport when they met for dinner. It also seemed like he felt a twinge of jealousy following the Spangler-Roy- Bloom tete-a-tete-a-tete from last week’s episode. That jealousy may have played out this week in Kale’s not-so-selfless act of volunteerism to Will’s cause. I just know Kale isn’t all he’s cracked up to be, SOMETHING is going on with that guy.

Katherine-Tom: Well, I gain a little more faith in this relationship every week. And that faith was all set in motion by the moves Tom made to give Katherine the clues she needed to follow his trail. Notwithstanding the fact that he had a completely secret life in which he may have secretly controlled governmental rises and falls, she seems committed to him. I am afraid for her in what she might uncover, not only for her safety (these folks tend to NOT mess around) but in what she may find about her husband. She may be romanticizing his memory, but it seems to me this thing was real.
Questions

• Just what ARE Kale’s motives?
  I have no idea. I cannot put a pin in this guy. He is shifty. He makes backhanded plays, he surprises me at every turn, and frankly I think he might be a little confused. Perhaps Kale really is the new Ed Bancroft and I’ve got to learn to trust him, but that seems nearly impossible. There’s a lot to Kale and we’ve already seen a bunch of it, but I’m having trouble connecting the dots!
• Are “The Foundation” and Atlas McDowell one and the same?
  This wasn’t my first thought, but it was pretty close. And now I can’t shake the thought that the two are related. I don’t know how yet, but I know that Atlas is involved in some weird/shady stuff and that it sounds like the name of a foundation from everything we know about it (ALMOST NOTHING). It also sounds like an awesome superhero secret identity.
• Is Will sane enough to keep going?
  I think this was the first episode to reallllly tap into the idea of a collective paranoia when Will was freaking out. I loved how the scenes were shot hastily and James Badge Dale did a great job of being harried and overly watchful.  Will he keep it together? Yeah I think he will, despite his new-found anxiety, he was able to keep it together enough to shake the tail in an aggressive manner, he just needs to keep a cooler head and realize that he’s in a big boiler pot now.

In the meantime, Kale questions Spangler about loose ends surrounding David’s death. Spangler assures him things are under control and sheds a White Paper entitled “The Houston Problem.” Will returns to Bancroft do deliver the news, but finds that Ed has gone off on a tangent, spinning a wild yarn about Bloom, the CIA, etc.  Will lies to Ed telling him that the Donald Bloom he found is a kid, Ed breaks down over David’s death.

Connecting the Dots (Craig Blankenhorn/AMC)

Will attends Spangler’s wife’s charity bash. Here he has a chance meeting with Katherine Rhumor over vodka, only a fleeting encounter. Later at the party, Will overhears Spangler say “If we don’t do it, who will?” Spangler spies him spying and invites him in to meet James Wheeler and R.C. Gilbert. As Will leaves, another man enters and lets Spangler and co. know “The squalls have been shipped,” which Spangler celebrates with a cheers. Two enlightening encounters with Kale later, we see Will deep into the conspiracy at his house when he hears a noise, pops up from the floor, and we fade to black.

BOOZEHOUND (Craig Blankenhorn/AMC)

At API, Will and the gang are re-focused on George and Yuri, but they seem stuck…until Tanya makes the suggestion that they focus on George, instead of Yuri. Will agrees with her and wants her to present it to Spangler. She gives it a test-run against Grant and Miles who shred it to pieces. Tanya is incredulous about the attacking nature when she runs into Will later. Will gives her a speech about fear in order to get her PUMPED for her big Spangler showdown. Luckily, she kills it with Spangler and he greenlights her strategy. She then returns to her office and downs an airplane bottle in “celebration.” Despite Tanya’s performance, Will suggests to Kale that she be included in the next round of drug testing. We also find out that George has been meeting with some more unseemly characters and well, Tanya was RIGHT.

In Katherine’s world, we find her with a financial adviser who suggests she dump MRQ Alternatives because it was a losing investment. MRQ just happens to be the business Tom switched over to Katherine a few days before his death. She asks Wheeler what he knows and he suggests she just drop it like the adviser said. She decides to visit the company and finds a locked file cabinet which she opens by using their anniversary on the combo lock. In the files, she finds a newspaper clipping about a CCNY professor whose death was ruled a suicide. Incidentally, his death occurred the day before the Berlin Wall fell. Coincidence? Paranoid me thinks no!

Discussion
And so, finally, we have been given some answers–and some fairly definitive ones. Senator Clay Davis is reporting his surveillance of Will to Spangler. Very possibly, it was Spangler whom Davis spoke with at the end of the episode from a couple of weeks ago when saying that Will was in cahoots with Bancroft. A high-profile government assassination mission is almost surely afoot and picking up speed, and David may have had much more to do with it than we imagined earlier. And Kale…

Well, let’s stick with Kale. What, concretely, do we learn about him from this episode? A few crucially important expository biographical facts–ex-CIA, black ops, Recruited by Spangler sometime in the 80s to come to API, a longstanding  professional relationship with Donald Bloom, fellow CIA killer and mystery man of last week’s episode. All of which is helpful, especially the CIA part, though it doesn’t explain why Kale dresses like he’s going off to teach an acting class at NYU. Knowing now what we do, though, more questions arise, and halfway through the season I’m as in the dark now as I was in the beginning as to his motives, as well as where he falls in the API pecking order. Knowing–as Bancroft figured out for us–that the previous appearances of mysteriously coordinated crossword clues in 1983 (authored by Bancroft) signaled the go-codes for a series of covert assassinations, and that it was the appearance of a similar series of codes that touched of the series with David’s (and very possibly Tom’s) death, how much Kale knows is a mystery. Consider:

• When David shows the crosswords Will has deciphered to Kale in the Pilot, he is alarmed enough by them to take them upstairs to Spangler. When Spangler asks him if there has been any movement on them later on , he remarks that it is “all quiet.” Does he think it is? Does he know it isn’t?
• From this episode, it is strongly hinted at that both Kale and Bloom were involved in the prior campaign, given that both were stationed in Beirut in the 1980s, around the time when America’s covert reprisal campaign against Hezbollah. Kale may have recognized the codes back then, especially if he was involved in the campaign, but it doesn’t seem like he would now. It is Bloom after all, not Kale, who has been hopping between Nigeria, Houston, and the Middle East. How much would Kale likely know about the current camaign? Spangler certainly is in the loop, which leads me to my next point.
• Just when we think from this episode that Kale really has one up on everybody at API, we see that Spangler and Bloom have one up on him, meeting in a derelict high school gym, discussing the status of their surveillance of Will, in which they shift their attention to Katherine.
  

  More like Star Spangler Killer. AMIRIGHT? (Craig Blankenhorn/AMC)

Most fascinating is his cat-and-mouse game with Will, after Will has seen him with Bloom. At the charity event he tells Will that he doesn’t want to see him get involved in any “mayhem” (Will has already gotten the picture here, and has gone to Bancroft to try on throw him off the trail–more on that in a bit). This I read less as a threat than as a warning, and a specific one. Remember, as soon as Will spots him with Bloom, he goes to Spangler and asks point blank, flustered for the first time, if he is sure that David’s loose ends have been tied up. These “loose ends,” of course, are whatever has been left behind after David’s discovery of the go-codes got him killed. Is Kale protecting Will? Does he suspect that he is onto the scheme as well? And, in warning Will to stay away, is he more drawn into the scheme itself? Again, very possible. That glimpse of Kale we get as the rest are coming out of the meeting, on the outside looking in, unfamiliar, to say the least.

Kale says MEOW to Will (David M. Russell/AMC)

Before leaving off with my questions to chew on for next week, a few stray comments:

• Boy, Tanya is turning into a complicated character, isn’t she? The last couple episodes have given her special focus, which makes me wonder if the show has bigger things in store for her, or if it is just doing its due diligence making sure each of team members gets their moments in the sun (if so, Grant is up next). Even so, Maggie (and by association Kale) take great interest in how she’s doing–though perhaps it’s because she’s new to the squad. (It also makes me wonder how seriously they vetted her as a poorly concealed substance abuse problem would be pretty apparent. Substance issues aside, I cheered for her when she convinced Spangler to throw the weight of their investigation to Beck, and Will’s good fear/bad fear speech was the best writing of the week. Speaking of–
• I said last week that I didn’t think the Beck investigation was central to the season’s plot. With the way things came together this week, I’m willing to rethink that. The revelation at the end that Beck has been meeting with Iranian intelligence could wrap up very easily into the rest of the plot.
• Another of my questions from last week was answered–When will Katherine take a look at MRQ Alternatives? All we learn, however, is that MRQ used to make clothes, and wasn’t very successful at it. I had great fun pausing the episode to see what I could glean from the clipping she pulls out of Tom’s locked file.

Questions of the Week:

Why did Will purposely throw Bancroft off of Bloom’s trail?
Pete: To me the answer seems clear–Will new he was being followed, assumed he was being bugged, and needed to disabuse, even temporarily, the notion that he was honing in on the thing Spangler & Co. don’t want him finding out. It seems to have worked for now–Spangler tells Senator Clay Davis to concentrate on Katherine Rhumor. We’ll see how long this ruse holds up.

Seth: I have to ardently disagree. I think Will saw that Bancroft was falling off the deep end again, as he was earlier in his life and wanted to stop production on A Beautiful Mind 2: Bancroft’s Batty Brain. It was more related to personal feelings about wanting to protect Bancroft from himself than from anyone else.

Who wrote the go-code?

Pete: Perhaps surprisingly, I’ve only starting thinking about this now. When Ed Bancroft wrote the last one, he was (I believe) at API in his pre-psycho Jon Nash days. Is the new one from within API also? If so, from whom? Kale seems unlikely, unless he’s pulling one hell of a long con on us all by drawing everyone else out into the open so he can see who his potential enemies/obstacles are. Spangler is a possibility. A sexy possibility is David himself, though I really haven’t thought this through too much–and David may not have been quite high enough at API for have this kind of clout. Spangler, to me, seems the most likely culprit–or someone we have yet to meet.

Seth: Good question and I honestly have no good answer. Of the folks we’ve met at API, right now, Kale seems most likely to me. He is a smart guy with high clearance who knew what he saw immediately, but we found out this week, he’s still under Spangler’s thumb a bit. I think it will be interesting to see how this plays out especially considering Kale’s “threat” toward Will this week. He clearly knows Will is no commoner.

Did David knowingly–or unknowingly–play a role in his own death?

Pete: I’m fascinated by this–though a little too tired at this late hour to really dive more deeply into it. It was clear from the first episode, though, that David knew his time was up. I said in an earlier post that David left a series of seemingly frivolous messages for Will in an effort to weed out anyone besides Will that might try to decipher them. I still stand by this. Knowing now about David’s white paper and its disappearance convinces me more–I think David knew his work connected with this “Houston Problem” was going to be destroyed, and he must communicate its essential points to Will in other ways. WE will see if future weeks vindicate me on this count.

Seth: I think he certainly unwittingly did and he knew about it ahead of time. He had to have had some idea that he was going down to set up all of this clues and games for Will. David’s inclusion of Will in the conspiracy makes sense, but also confuses me. I thought he wanted to protect Will by showing Kale the crossword and claiming the work himself, but all of that is undone by all of the puzzles, clues, and games David left behind to then wrap Will up in it. David knew the proverbial poo was hitting the fan, but I don’t think he pushed himself into it voluntarily.

I think our stride is appearing here at The 5th Leaf! Tune in next week for some more heady discussion following Rubicon.

Optimus Prime's Butt May Have Been In This Chair

FUTURE BIKES!!!!!!!

Holy Blown Up World Batman!

NEXT SUMMER...EVERYTHING GETS BLOWED UP

The cars that would save the world by turning into giant alien robots. Just another sunny day in Chicago.

So a nice little impromptu set visit pays off quite well for the PR Street Team with some candid shots of the set, props, and generally of the scorched earth. Gotta love it. Mr. Bay seems to be sticking with the formula of Big Bots+Big Blasters= Big Booms. Should be pretty ridiculous, especially in 3D.

I'm sensitive, but not too sensitive as to drive away men. This face says it all.

Two questions:

Karla: I think Jonah Hill definitely falls into this category.  I think he’s capable of more but it would be really hard for him to make the crossover into a more dramatic role.  Maybe he’s not even interested in something more serious.  He’s younger and probably having a lot of fun working on his comedies and voice overs.  I sort of have Jason Schwartzman-sized hopes for him and I wouldn’t want to see him get pigeon-holed into being the funny, humorously awkward kid in every film he does.

Jim: Don’t all fat actors get typecast as the buddy in the buddy comedy, no matter how hard they try?

Also, in order to be typecasted, you have to demonstrate that you have some sort of range that is not being exploited by the industry for whatever reason (probably money…).  Not hating on Jonah Hill, but he hasn’t made Wet Hot American Summer yet. (and as an aside, I think there are actually very few comedians who AREN’T typecasted)

Wath this movie now!

If I had to go with someone I think I’d take on one of Seth’s man-crushes, Joseph Gordon Levitt.  He just stepped out of his typical sensitive dude in off beat indie comedy and seemed to be stuck somewhere between Zach Braff and Jon Krasinsky on the charming but ultimately forgettable scale.  He was great in Inception, and if he really is going to play the Riddler in the next Batman, then my argument is pretty much moot, but I think he’s on the precipice of either sliding back into “make the chicks swoon and not much else mode” or over-capitalizing on Inception‘s success and taking on a series of inferior sidekick roles morphing into poor man’s Edward Norton…

Caroline: “Poor man’s Edward Norton”…love it.

Lets apply that to some ladies. Leslie Man is the poor woman’s Joan Cusack…albeit a hotter version.

As for the A-listers, Cate Blanchett needs to grab a crack whore roll fast because while admittedly an amazing actress, she always carries with her the same air of dignified grace. It is as if her characters are always inner queens…even when shes not Elizabeth. I just want to see if she can lose the inherent cultivation and get a little crude.

Patrick: Michael Cera seems to play the same awkward-nerdy leading man over and over again.  He definitely looks the part but I would love to see him in something that’s not funny.

Mumblecore Hero

Seth: I have to pick at Jim’s “man-crush” statement. I wouldn’t consider him a man-crush personally, it’s just weird to have a famous doppelganger. And I’d gather that his roles have been pretty varied throughout his career actually. In fact, a quick glance at this credits shows only ONE (MAYBE two if you count 10 Things, but they were made several years apart) “make the chicks swoon and not much else mode”. He’s been a High school noir detective (Brick), a broken-down bank robber-turned-hero (The Lookout, excellent if you haven’t seen it), an archvillian (GI Joe), a misanthrope (Hesher), an Iraq war veteran (Stop-Loss), and the future holds more variety with nothing resembling one of these roles. Just scan his IMDB page, he’s had a pretty varied career. Which is one of the reasons I don’t mind sharing a face with him.

So while I may have done nothing to disprove Jim’s claim of a man-crush (for me that’s Matt Damon or the aforementioned Ed Norton) I think I’ve safely defended my Doppelganger.

Patrick: Jim was on the money with the fat actor’s always being the buddy, never getting the girl, and being the nice guy etc… Although I think a recent trend, in most of the movies you’ve just named, busts the fat guy type cast. The chubby guy actually gets the girl in King of Queens, Forty Year Old Virgin, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall as well.

Comedic actors not branching out doesn’t seem like type casting because the actors named seemingly have a choice of movie projects and choose to swing in their wheel house and make butt loads of cash, Hollywood if nothing else is formulaic.  If these guys are victims of anything it’s that. They might not get too many acting roles outside of comedy because of the way they look or their acting history. For example Jason Statham won’t be playing any geeky high school guys any time soon, but actors like Rudd, Hill and others are big enough to have a choice.  Actor’s ability to choose probably has a place in the definition as well.

Type cast as double edge sword hypothetical role play: Me -Movie producer Sandra Bullock- as Danny Trejo

Movie Producer: Hey Danny Trejo you’d be perfect for this new role as Mexican inmate # 5 in the remake of The Great Escape.

Danny Trejo: Well I guess if I want to eat and keep doing what I love I have to play this role again, but next time I swear I’m holding out for the role of Wall Street exec!

Sorry Dan-o that role’s not coming around the bend anytime soon.  No tatted Latinos on the Forbes list means no tatted Gordon Geko’s, (although he could actually play the Mexican inmate in the Wall Street sequel and I can’t even talk about lebuff right now an actor who I hate but consistently like his movies.)

So my answer is Danny Trejo eternally the Mexican former/future/current inmate when I feel he has the potential for more but not the choice.

It's almost unsettling to see him smile.

Sherman: Not a comedic typecast, but it would be nice to see Morgan Freeman play a perverted serial killer or anything other than “black mentor” (today’s version of “magical negro”, which Freeman also used to play all the time).  And as a sub-typecast as “black mentor” he’s also typecast as “God”.  Which is a lot cooler.

Kevin: My answer is Paul Rudd’s companion in Role Models-Sean William Scott

The StifMeister Forever

Think about it, name a movie when he wasn’t an updated version of Stifler. Sure, American Pie was the teen movie of our generation and that may have cemented him. But to his credit, he fucking nails the duchey-yet funny dude role better than anyone. I stand by that he’s a funny actor, who can mix in classic physical comedy, stupid frat guy jokes, but still work in some heart. I enjoyed him in American Pies (really the only reedeming part of the sequels), Road Trip, The Rundown (yeah, I said it). Sure he has some crappy movies, i.e. Dukes of Hazzard, but it’s the last example of Role Models that made me think there was more to this SWS character. By all accounts he plays an updated, more adult version of Stifler in that film, but he showed some restraint and somehow makes that character likeable against all odds, and really seemed to add some subtly to the role. Also, showed he could really bring in the emotional life lesson part of the storyline. Maybe he’s typecast thats all he can do, but I really think he can do a lot more as an actor and comedic role outside of douchy athlete in high school. I wan to see him get a shot at something different, at least to see how it goes. More SWS in my life I say!

What say you Ramblers? Are there other actors who you care for who are in danger of being typecast or are !GASP! already?  I think this is really a function of kinda stock characters being tweaked in a small way and people being set-up to take certain roles. Somebody write some new characters!

Will traveled to Washington, D.C. with Spangler, but not before encountering a mysteriously sexy new neighbor. In DC, Spangler reveals himself to be a rather idiosyncratic, eccentric man. However, we also see that he is rather brilliant remarking on ties, the nature of intelligence, and proper handbag choice. Their mission on this trip is to secure unrestricted funding from the government. Spangler’s eloquence wins them the day as he gives the aforementioned tie speech (doesn’t sound exciting, but it was!). We also see that Spangler has taken a shine to Will as he purchases him a new briefcase coming full circle on his earlier diatribe regarding Will’s subpar handbag choice. Also in Washington, Will meets with a buddy from the CIA to get info on the 7 names he and Bancroft found last week. The pal seemed upset about helping Will, but did it nonetheless and we come away with a new name, Donald Bloom and an era and location where all 7 worked: Mid-80′s in the Mid-east. What we really get from this trip though is a window into Spangler’s psyche, the first real shot at him, and what we see is confusing: a melange of brilliance and potentially crippling eccentricity. He’s managed to reach near the top of his field. His 3 set pieces/monologues this week to me were the star of the episode, breaking from his quirky ways to show us how he got where he is and exactly how strong a manipulator he might be.

Back in NY, Will’s team is tasked by Kale to backburner their hunt for the money launder/terrorist to focus on an Indonesian terrorist named Kateb (Qateb? I have no idea). Kale tells them that there can be no split decisions on “irreversibles.” Tanya questions what that means and Grant all too plainly replies “people you can’t un-kill.” In a storyline reminiscent of the classic 12 Angry Men, we see Miles, Tanya, and Grant debate Kateb’s fate. They go back and forth, they switch sides, and mostly we get to see the group’s dynamic and what it’s like to be an intelligence analyst. More on this from Pete later as it bore some really interesting tidbits.

The third prong of the story we’re beginning to see emerge, is Katherine’s personal investigation of Thom’s death. The Rhumors may not have shared all of their secrets, but it’s clear that they loved each other. In a heartbreaking scene, Katherine receives a package containing all of the evidence from her husband’s investigation (is this really what they do? TERRIBLE IDEA!) and as she goes through his belongings: blood soaked fabrics, wedding ring, and finally his phone where she discovers two messages. One of them is from her, the other from Wheeler who says “Tom, if you keep this up, you know what’s going to happen.” Katherine replays the message several times and her recognition grows with each listen. She returns to the townhouse to look around and finds a take-out menu from a Chinese place. She heads there and converses with the cashier who eventually reveals that delivery was taken to the townhouse and was paid for by James Wheeler. So she finds out what we did last week: Wheeler is a scumbag.

The Widow Detective (Craig Blankenhorn/AMC)

When our hero returns to the office and his colleagues, we see that he tasked Miles to run a check on the aforementioned Donald Bloom, who as it turns out recently flew into New York…

Discussion by Pete

In this week’s episode, what do we learn about the possible conspiracy shadowing David’s death? Nothing! How much closer do we get to a sense of the conspiracy behind Rhumor’s suicide? Not much! Do these two parallel racks come any closer to crossing? No! And yet, this week’s was a very good episode, in some ways perhaps the best, in establishing both the capabilities of the show and revealing yet more about the place of work its characters have chosen.

With Will and Spangler in D.C., the rest of the team is left behind to do their best chasing an Indonesian terrorist and we see whole worlds revealed concerning API’s central function, and why the lives of everyone on Will’s team are in shambles.  And so, here we are. This is what they do. This is why–at least in part–Miles fights with his wife over custody of their children and feels nostalgia and guilt at the sight of suspected terrorists with their families. It is why Tanya is such a nervous, pill popping wreck. It is why Grant is such a huge dick. This is what they do–building the cases for the assassination of terrorists halfway around the world, on incomplete intelligence (all intelligence is incomplete, as Kale will remind them), bending and contorting their logic, looking for meaning and rationalization in abstract numbers and figures, and selectively blind themselves to pieces of information (usually having to do with children and the other necessary collateral damages of a clandestine bombing) that muddy up their best attempts to justify what they’ll be reading about in tomorrow’s paper.

What have we learned, aside from why these three are the walking dead (AMC CROSS PROMOTION!)? Well, for one, they can carry their part of the show and contribute meaningfully to it even when separated from the investigations of the mysteries surrounding the two deaths that have shadowed Rubicon from its beginning. This is important–without losing sense of the greater tasks facing its characters, the team shows that the show does just fine as well as a procedural, thank you very much. Their ultimate recommendation to kill Kateb may not be heard from next week, but its cumulative effects will be felt–they agonize over it before learning to live with it, before becoming numb to it, before they are so deadened to it that Will can walk in at the episode’s end, declare the strike a success, and not give it a second thought. There’s a kind of poetry in it, Will finding himself in this line of work, going on nine years after his family was killed by Islamic terrorists. It also may offer a clue to David’s death. Remember, from a couple of weeks past, Hal’s finding that the only time such a coordinated intelligence clue was spotted across several crosswords–as detected by Will–preceded a massive terrorist attack on a U.S. army base in Beirut, killing nearly 300 soldiers and personnel. What is on the way now, that is so threatening that David is killed even for having an inkling that it exists?

The Walking Dead (Credit: Craig Blankenhorn/AMC)

Now that the team has taken us for a spin and shown us what they can do, a couple questions for the gallery:

• When is Katherine going to look into the business her husband left her?
• Pete: Just saying, if I found out I was the new owner of a business with a completely non-descript front-sounding name, and a townhouse—even an Upper East Side mansion straight from the real estate porn section of the Sunday paper—I might first want to know what that business is in the business of doing. Especially if, you know, my spouse has died under suspicious circumstances, and his best friend is leaving ominous messages on his cell phone just before his death, not to mention ordering Chinese food from the house he denied knowing the existence of. Just saying.
• Seth: Couldn’t agree more. Although it seems like she is in a bit of a haze regarding her husband’s death and I can’t really get a grasp on how much time is passing on this show. I won’t contend to know how to react in a position like that because I’ve never been through losing my beloved and then finding out he had a whole other life. Might be a little jarring and investigating all of this new life would certainly be intriguing, but working through your grief might take precedence.
• Who is the woman across the way from Will?
• Pete: This, I feel, is the sister question to Where the hell was Senator Clay Davis this week? For certain, she is new to the picture, otherwise Will wouldn’t give her such a curious look when seeing her, he would just say “oh hey, mysterious painter chick is there again” to himself while brewing his Turkish coffee. All signs, to me, point to her being involved with his surveillance. Remember: last week Davis’s partner got made by Will. We won’t see him again, and they’re going to have to be a lot more sly this time around with him wise to the fact that he’s being followed. We will see her again. (otherwise I don’t know why Law & Order’s Annie Parisse would take a role with 30 seconds of screen time and no dialogue). Also, Will might want to start sweeping his place for bugs. Like, now. (Also, your suit looks like the one a senior wears to his first job interview. Maybe Spangler will treat you to a new one next week? You already got him to go in the briefcase, after all.)
• Seth: I think she’s obviously going to be part of the story, but how cool would it be if she wasn’t? Given that this show is supposed to tap into our collective paranoia, how great would it be to throw in red herrings like that to make the viewer really get squirmy. Again, I think she’ll be integral to this story, but I almost wish she wasn’t.
• What of the names?
• Pete: By this I mean the seven names Will wanted information on at the end of last week’s episode. We get a few tidbits, courtesy of Will’s friend, who—given that this is D.C.—does the whole Deep Throat thing by meeting him in a parking garage at night to give him information. What we get isn’t much, other than the unifying factor that they were all intelligence officers stationed in the Middle East in the 1980s. Only one stands out—a man named Donald Bloom, who may have just gotten to New York. We’ll see him again, though remember there was still one name on Will’s list that turns up nothing.
• Seth: I think the missing name is really interesting, OF COURSE. That’s what it’s supposed to do. But I think that might be a season 2 situation. I think we’ll get to know Donald Bloom over the course of this season and how he might play into the 4th Leaf and the old boys club. Or perhaps we’ll meet them both this year and end up knowing everything! That seems likely.
  

Another week down and another week for your thoughts folks, what do you have to discuss following “The Outsider”?

Round 1- Jim, Brad, Greg, Seth

1. Robyn- “Dancing on My Own”
I’m going to start things off with my indisputable #1 kick-ass track of 2010 so far.  That track is “Dancing on My Own” by Swedish teen-pop-sensation-turned-indie-pop-genius Robyn.  To like Robyn generally, you need to have somewhere deep down a 13-year old girl that just wants to rock the Tiger Beat style and kill it at the upcoming Middle School Dance.  Personally, Robyn has helped me discover this part of myself (a part I never knew existed…), but this song shouldn’t even require that.  “Dancing on My Own” is a pop-gem, a completely un-ironic, pure, soulful expression of what it means to lose yourself on the dance floor.  It has all the elements of a great song, a killer hook (I’ve opined at length about the resurgence of “Whoah” as the ultimate musical word elsewhere), unintrusive use of auto-tune, and a break down to end all break downs (the snare run at the end of the bridge is just jaw-droppingly perfect).  Ultimately, in a time when pop music is for the most part utter poo, Robyn is here to remind us that there is a reason we all (however secretly) dug Britney and *NSYNC and Backstreet back in the day.

2. LCD Soundsystem- “Dance Yrself Clean”
First why it rocks. Well, it emphasizes what LCD Soundsystem is like when they’re hitting on all cylinders–drawn out, unforced, beatastic, intrinsically danceable, weirdly nostalgic. Sometimes the lyrical approach James Murphy takes to his jams are a little on the sloppy side, but this is an example of a song where the beat and melody call for his simple, direct line reading.

Why it comes next? Well it follows the theme (albeit a bit more closely) of the cleansing power of dance in forgetting yourself and your situation. You could even maybe argue that Robyn is singing to James and this is his rebuttal. He’s probably somewhat intoxicated during his rebuttal, which explains his inability to be as forward as Robyn is during her song.

3. The National- “Bloodbuzz, Ohio”
Whoa whoa whoa!  There’s too much carefree, upbeat happiness going on here.  Time to dial that back.

This band came really out of nowhere for me and I have been burning this album up since it came out, no track more than this orchestrated, washed out love story with it’s simmering slow build and swooning vocals. It’s all slow-rolling, quietly-building then heart-filling Brigade of Sound (Take that Phil Spector). And as far as content goes, what’s better than a love song about a relationship from start to finish and when I listen to it I hope I’m lucky enough to have something as sweet and complex as their relationship and this tune.

This took me awhile to think of, then I kicked myself for not thinking of it immediately. I personally love shouting aloud at this song. It just rocks. And despite the repetition of the chorus, this is what rock n’ roll can sound like when you just don’t know better than to lay on heavy reverb, shout into the microphone, and kick over amplifiers. It’s a sound I missed and it’s infectious on the whole album, but this song epitomizes the effervescence of a band that just doesn’t know better and still has the spring in their step to show us some muscle. They stay true to their surfer roots and explores what they can do when they just let it all hang out. We could use a little more derring-do in our lives and this song supplies it.

This guy is folksy metaphysics straight out of unplugged Bob Dylan only more reflective than protest/commentary.  Set to a gently twanging guitar this song exudes hope  in the face of hardship and frustration.  Stripped down to just a guitar and a voice, the melody repeats itself throughout but remains engaging.  You get this image of driving down the highway of life and a series of metaphors for the varying troubles a man can encounter.  A basic premise but it all comes together well.

Let’s keep this in the good ole USA WITH THEEEE SUMMAAAAA HIIIIIIT! Just cuz, we’re seven songs in–we gotta throw people a bone.

This one’s gonna be a little off the wall, but I’m pulling the theme of nostalgia from BoB and taking it farther back in time to the Civil War with Titus Andronicus’ Bruce Springsteen-meets-Iggy Pop uber anthem “A More Perfect Union”.  These guys are the shit.  Front man Patrick Stickles has this great knack for scuzzy but catchy riffs and profanity laden gutter poetry that is at once grouchy old man and tough young punk.  The tune also appropriates the Boss in such a way that borders on cheesy but somehow works.  “Tramps like us, baby we were born to die!”

I’m sticking with the mature nostalgia theme and going with the standout track from Acrade Fire’s just released album.  Almost every review I’ve read has picked “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” as the best track, and, well, they’re all right.  The track shows AF dropping the sort of over-the-top drama act for a pulsating disco number that reminds you of Blondie or Depeche Mode.  This album is overall a really good album, better I think than many even expected, and I for one was really surprised that the strongest track was one of Regine Chassagne’s (wife of head mopester Win Butler) tunes because I’ve always been of the opinion that her songs were the weaker ones.  This song, and the killer rendition of Funeral’s “Haiti” at the Mann     Center last Monday have converted me.

I’ma go with my main men so far this year–Frightened Rabbit with “Swim Until You Can’t See Land”. Mind you, I don’t think this is the best song on the album, but it really is the most representative of their anthemic abilities. Also, I may not think it’s the best cuz I played the CRAP out of it when the single came out last November. Frightened Rabbit, much like The National, are a perfect cold weather band. Anyways, this jam is really just taking the Arcade Fire song another step–going from needing to be out of the encompassing and suffocating framework of urban development and saying “YEAH? Well how about I just forget land altogether and disappear into the ocean? Suckers.” That’s probably exactly what the song is about.

3. Crystal Castles- “Celestica”

Not sure why I love this song so much but I do.  In the world of disco pop, these jokers slant more towards the disco end of the spectrum.   Its hard to describe this song without a little context.  This band shifts between dance inspired electronica with a great set of vocals and ear shattering noise with distorted scream/singing.  Strange, I know.  This is one of the pretty ones. It’s based on a solid beat that’s not too fast and well layered melodies and counters.  From the lyrics and music you get this feeling of the duplicitous nature of life toying with the desire for stability and insecurity.  The back and forth of one of the counter melodies as they play with the stereo function, changing the direction of sound nails this well. I can’t say I know many bands to compare them to so I won’t try.  Check it out.

An atypical VW song which works in their sound with a more beat-heavy, electronic sound. I think it might be a sign of things to come because it was one of the only songs Rostam really got pumped for when I saw them in April. It’s heavier on beats/electronics than guitars backing Ezra’s smooth vocals and it works to create a nice little dancey tune. I’m currently bobbing my head along with it. It also has one of the best videos released this year.

I mean I don’t really know what to say about this one other than it’s a love story involving a mummy. I love the sentiment of this song not because it’s sweet and dialed-in, but because it’s real. In essence (in my mind) it’s about a guy (the mummy), who’s been turned off love and then he meets a girl who wakes him up out of his love slumber (cheesiest term ever). Once she fixes him, they are together but grow apart. And then she dies! WTF! But seriously I love this song, it will DEFINITELY be in my top 5 come end of year countdown time.

I had some problems with this last pick but this song is money.  What can I say, I love the Lips and even though it wasn’t written entirely by them, it has their fingerprints all over it.  No surprise this song is all about revenge and its corrosive qualities.  A chill tune with several parts that compliment each other well.  A warbly electronic twitter in the background with direct and sincere lyrics, with a sparse chime for punctuation.  The outro lead by a marching snare drum gives a great ending statement.

This song is musically a nice companion to “Revenge.” This is probably the strongest song on the album (see: most likely to win her new fans). In it, she effortlessly moves between bouncy, melancholy, then back to bouncy. One of those seven minute songs that doesn’t feel like seven minutes.

I have mixed feelings about this album, it’s the first one they produced on their own, and I think they indulged their studio quirks a little too heavily, but this song has all the tightness of “The Way We Get By” or “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” and reminds you that there’s no better groove machine in music today than this lock-tight group.

My reasons are short and simple. This is one of the few albums I’ve dug this year, even though it’s not nearly as good as their last one. There’s a few stand out tracks but this one is the catchiest. Kinda of a sad sentiment, but peppy beyond belief. Also named after a funny character on Mighty Boosh.

Although I have no business identifying with a song about overcoming the rough streets of indifference, it’s a damn good song and I enjoy it.  This song is everything we’ve come to expect from The Roots combining old school R&B with modern hip-hop.  Great rhythm section at the core with a sweet organ melody and earnest lyrics.  Good.

This song is the song playing at the party that happens to be about that very party. I love the over-the-top, 70′s referencing gloss rock that these guys employ and this song combines those leanings with some pop sensibilities to create for me the strongest song on one of the best albums of the year. You’ll recognize all the riffs immediately and that’s part of the good feeling about this band. They lay it down like they’re from another era and all they want do is soak up every ounce of the evening. Can’t help but feel the same way when I hear this jam.

Fuzzy electronica. With a disconnected voice. Weirdly it sounds so much warmer than how I just described it. This song could easily have been released during the 90′s, but I love it. I’m ashamed I forgot it.

The chill closing statement to a solid electronica album.  This tune backs off some of the more unique turns they take in the album but it’s a fitting end.  Mellow sounds throughout with meandering guitars and sparse percussion this song is made for quiet reflection.

3. Gorillaz- “Superfast Jellyfish”

Well for my final one I have to go with really the only track I liked off the Gorillaz release–I mean “Stylo” is ok, and I’m sure if I gave the record a more dedicated listen then I might find others, but “Superfast Jellyfish” was really the first one to pop off the record. Just really stupid imagery but multiple hooks so I gave it the benefit of the doubt for my last pick.

4. Future Islands- “An Apology”

I’m gonna polish things off on a weirder note.  This band is from Baltimore.  The lead singer has one of the most awesomest voices.  It’s like a more melodic Tom Waits.  The way he delivers the line “We move in precarious ways” is just perfect.  The music is synthy, cinematic, but not overburdened in any way.  Definitely something to groove to.

24 Songs to map out a year. Well 2/3 of a year. Lots of electronica, some good dance jams, some audacious rock. I’d say that overall, the electronic-dancey music is winning so far. Listen to the 2/3 mixtape at the top of the page and tell us what you think!

AMC picks up new crime show which looks like it could be awesome!

Pete’s Thoughts (edited a bit this week):

Church or state? Specifically, am I the church or am I the state? That is the question which, at the beginning of last night’s episode, the deceased (murdered?) David Hadas’ wife Joan, is hoping she may be able to find the answer to. It seems, as with the spouses and families of just about everyone who works at API, that her husband—and hence her place in the context of his life—has remained a mystery to her throughout these years. Give credit to the producers here: I had envisioned in those first couple minutes, would give her a sense of closure, that she would be able to find at least a little of his essence in the space he occupied. I don’t know what I was thinking assuming that Rubicon would allow such a Hallmark-ish moment to pass. She feels nothing of him. He is just as much a mystery to her now as he ever was (Admittedly, this may not have been helped by Will moving his stuff in. Channeling Seth Rogen:You framed an Asia poster?).

I thought at the time that for Joan to make such a comparison was odd. Church and state, after all, function more or less fine without each other. They have been, in fact, fractured from our country’s founding, officially, constitutionally, anyways. To ask whether Joan was the church or the state, then, seems to make an unnecessary distinction—whichever side his work was, she wasn’t, and at best the two are doomed to an uneasy alliance based on a set of understandings not to be crossed.

But then, Rubicon—especially as expressed through last night’s episode—is about fractured relationships or, at least, relationships that are necessarily compromised by the very facts of their existence. Will and Evan (David’s son, by David’s death). Katherine and Wheeler (by Tom’s death). Maggie and Kale (by their inequality). Maggie and her returning ex-husband (by their turbulent past). Maggie and Will (perhaps by the chasm between Will and everyone else opened by the loss of his family on 9/11).

Let’s return to Maggie and Kale, the scene of last week’s tres-uncomfortable May-December rendezvous, where it is strongly hinted at that Kale keeps her there to spy on the rest of the team, Will above all. We see a little different side of him this week, when she is torn between the things she knows (and we don’t) about her husband’s capabilities, and the possibility of her daughter being able to have a normal life. Here we don’t see scheming, self-serving, sleazy Kale—we see a gentler, more paternal Kale who seems genuinely concerned for her welfare and safety, who gives her the worldly counsel that people don’t change. All of this adds a new layer of complication to what we saw of them last week, while doing nothing to dissuade me of the possibilities of his character.

Daddy Issues! (Credit: Craig Blankenhorn/AMC)

To Will and Evan, then. Evan brings with him—surprise—more questions. First of all, what happened? Why was he, as I assume was the case, committed? Why did David essentially abandon him, signing the papers, greenlighting whatever treatment he got and walking away? Also, when did it happen? Will and Evan, quite obviously, have never gotten along well. Evan is pushy, awkward, confrontational, insecure, and childish—and that was after he got shipped off to Vermont and hopefully got himself cleaned up. What was he like before? How did Will’s arrival into the Hadas family line up with his descent? It’s quite obvious from their first encounters in the pilot that Will is the son that David always wanted. Even from what little we know about David before his death, to spurn a son like that seems terribly cold and out of character, and I do not think that he could have possibly taken such a thing lightly. No—he loved Evan, very much. Perhaps Evan had some of the same talents as him, and David pushed him too hard or Evan had tendencies that frightened David who was suffice it to say a tad quirky? Could Evan have been even further off the deep end? Perhaps I’m stretching a bit here. I hesitate to predict how much more of a role he will play in the rest of the season, but we’ll see him again, even after he’s taken the Norton (license plate 7A2-330…shows like this make you question every alpha-numeric sequence you see) back to the Green Mountain State.

Nerd Motorcycle Gang (Credit: Craig Blankenhorn/AMC)

Which brings me to the most intriguing two moments of the evening—those of Katharine and Wheeler nostalgically gazing at the old photos (Katherine’s of the boy I presume would later be her husband), Wheeler of a group of boys presumably including him and Tom, and very possibly Spangler and any of the other men collected to discuss what’s next after Tom’s death. The establishment of the long-standing connection here (Wheeler says to Katherine at one point that Tom “was my brother”) conjures up all the great stories and the Skull and Bones, WASP-y, quasi-religious ideology that organizations like the CIA were born of (The Good Shepherd captures this well, if little else). Here we are again, church and state.

Creepin' on a widow. . .That's LOW Sledge Hammer. (Credit: Craig Blankenhorn/AMC)

Of course, I think this takes the boys-club ethos of Tom’s and Wheeler’s group a little far. I hope we don’t find this series veering in the direction of a bad Dan Brown novel (ok, a Dan Brown novel), but an important thing has been established—that theirs is a decades old connection, one not easily broken.

This narrative aside, and since I’ve studiously avoided most of Seth’s prescribed topics, my more isolated thoughts:

• First, the code. Again, we see Will struggle for much of an episode to decode something which, in the end, seems playful on its surface—a message to him hidden in an obscure stat about the New York Yankees. Again, as I said last week, this annoyed me; it seemed that David was wasting Will’s precious time. There may be a good reason for it though. In leaving messages that only Will will find and which will only have a personal significance to Will, David may be ensuring that only Will can follow the trail he has left, because he doesn’t want to risk anyone else finding whatever his secret is. I like this and I’m sticking with it.
• When Will finally meets Farber, the FBI agent apologizes for being a little obvious in his tailing—he hasn’t done this in a while. You think? What was it, the big black trench coat that gave you away?
• I still don’t know if the George Beck subplot has any bearing on the rest of the plot, but it sure does a good job drawing out the inner hells of Will’s team. This week it was Miles’s turn to feel the pain—God knows what his home life was like if a suspected money launderer/potential terrorist is looking like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life to him.
• I meant to comment on this last week but forgot—the copy of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana on Tom’s nightstand. For what it’s worth the plot, roughly, concerns a vacuum cleaner salesman recruited to be a spy in pre-revolutionary Cuba, who fabricates a fantastic web of lies which become easier to be treated as fact due to the momentum they have picked up than to exposed as supporting the house of cards they do. Do with that what you will. (EDITOR’S NOTE: NICE FIND PETE!)
• Why did Wheeler lie about not knowing of Tom’s townhouse? More importantly, why did he go there after dinner with Katherine? If I were her, I would start taking that place apart Clue-style and look for secret passageways.
• Lastly, sheeeeeit, who the hell are the guys tracking Will? We still have no clue, except, usefully, that they probably aren’t FBI. So who are they? And who was Senator Clay Davis (from The Wire) talking to on the phone at the end of the episode? Wheeler? Spangler? I don’t know, but I suspect that the two plots of Rubicon—that of Will’s quest and the mystery surrounding Tom’s death—took one step closer to revealing their connection.

OK generally speaking, Pete has to get worse at this because I have nothing else to say really. Two quick points on what I thought: